African Rundown

It has been about a month now since I came to Africa, and today I finally had the chance for some physical exertion (minus kicking the soccer ball around a bit in Monrovia when I first arrived). I went running this afternoon with David, one of the men on the mission. I’ve been bugging him for some time, and our schedules finally lined up.

Let me preface this by saying that I have never seen anybody else just running for the sake of exercise around Tubmanburg before. So we, of course, ended up running down the main road of town with the usual afternoon crowd. And it turns out that I can get stared at even more than I usually do. It was great to finally get out and exercise though, and I would get the occasional encouragement from a child yelling after the “white man.”

But I must say, I am very much used to our nice flat land in Florida, and Africa is nothing like that. There are constant hills to conquer. I remember occasionally laughing to myself back home after hearing dad say that he was sore after putting too much incline on the treadmill…well, I guess he’ll have the last laugh after all.

It is my goal, however, to make it to the top of Mount Bomi by the time I leave here in August. I will offer up the suffering that I will most definitely endure from the heat and the height, and make it symbolically my own climb to Calvary on this trip.

I will not do it alone though. I told this to David and he said that whenever I’m ready to let him know and he will go with me. Also, a little later I had two other men approach me and told me to let them know the next time we go running so that they can come along too.

And next up on my list after I conquer Mt. Bomi: hardcore parkour!

-Dan
written 07/06/11